Tuesday, December 29, 2009

I'm a bit late with this, since it's after Christmas and all, but I didn't have time to get to it until this week.

This is one of my favorite Christmas hymns and I couldn't really find a recording of it. It's in a key I can sort of handle, so I thought I give it a shot singing it. I apologize in advance because I know it's off in some spots. I'd say I can sing, but not spectacularly. :D

The tune for this hymn is "Tempus Adest Floridum" which is also the tune for "Good King Wenceslas". Presumably most people know how that sounds, but for whatever reason the only version of that song that I'd ever heard was Mannheim Steamroller's version which though very cool, really sounds nothing like the tune:

At any rate, the hymn is "Gentle Mary Laid Her Child" and here are the words.

Gentle Mary laid her ChildLowly in a manger;There He lay, the undefiled,To the world a Stranger.Such a Babe in such a place,Can he be the saviour?Ask the saved of all the raceWho have found His favour.

Angels sang about His birth,Wise men sought and found Him;Heaven's star shone brightly forthGlory all around Him.Shepherds saw the wondrous sight,Heard the angels singing;All the plains were lit that night,All the hills were ringing.

Gentle Mary laid her ChildLowly in a manger;He is still the undefiled,But no more a Stranger.Son of God of humble birth,Beautiful the story;Praise His Name in all the earth,Hail! the King of Glory!

So here I am singing it. And to give credit where it is due, I did not play guitar, I sang along with this recording on YouTube, of someone much more talented than I on guitar. :)

I'm also minimally talented with the editing software on my computer, so it still sounds like the homemade recording that it is. I assume there's probably some way to fix that if I knew how all of it worked. And I majorly tripped over the word "Heaven's"...how does one fit that all in with the tune?? :D

Ooh boy, I just might be off half a note through the whole thing...I'm just not sure. :/ *rethinks posting this....*

In other news, it's the last day of 2009! I still have a post about Christmas that haven't gotten around to writing yet, as well as the tragic and suspenseful tale of the dying power adapter for my laptop. But those will have to wait until next year at this point.

Tonight we're planning on getting Chinese food (a New Year's Eve tradition!), and watching a movie, and putting together a puzzle. Yes, it sounds slightly lame, but I'm looking forward to it. We're watching a kids' movie even: Mouse Hunt. I remember watching it years and years ago for my birthday! Presumably my...eighth birthday at the earliest. It was probably more like ninth. Anyway, it should be interesting to see it again and see if I remember it properly. It made me slightly scared of factories I remember. :/

Sunday, December 27, 2009

They were predicting snow for last Friday, and I was of course rather skeptical about it. It never snows here...not really! Or not anymore at least. But lo and behold, it did! I had to work on Friday and around 11 I heard the sleet start coming down. Sounded like a bunch of falling sprinkles. :) And then it was sleet/rain/sloppy snowflakes; I guess that's what they call a "wintery mix". Finally it started sticking a little bit, on the driveway and even on the grass.

I was pointing out to the little girl that it was snowing, and she seemed to enjoy watching it come down, so I told her that we could go outside after lunch. Well, she didn't seem terribly interested in that so I thought "Whatever, we'll just step outside for a while and then come back in for naptime". Well, after lunch I was in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes and such and I suddenly find that I'm being handed my coat...and my scarf...and she's dragging my shoes over while saying "Shoose! Shoose!". Oh! I guess we are going outside after all! :) She went bustling around rounding up her coat and scarf too; it was so cute!

So after getting all bundled up we headed out. We didn't end up staying out long because it was really cold, and the snow was very wet and therefore getting us pretty wet. But we walked down their rather steep (and now slippery/slushy) driveway, so I reached for her hand so she didn't slide, at which she stopped and stubbornly said "No!" while vehemently shaking her head. Haha! She didn't want any help at all, though she finally let me hold my arm out in front of her to catch her if she slipped. I was telling my mom about this and she just sat there smirking because that's how I was when I was little. Yeah, yeah, it's only fair, I know. :D

Well, I got to leave a little bit early and Dad and I went to Costco before we headed home. And I drove. This was my first time driving in snow, since it doesn't snow that often and when it has I guess I haven't needed to go anywhere. It wasn't too bad really, but we saw people in Jeeps and pickup trucks having all sorts of problems.

I went out the next day and took a few pictures and sledded a bit, but there wasn't a steep enough hill to make me want to stay out and get all wet and cold, so I went back in pretty soon.

I had to glue my boot back together with the hot glue gun:

Snow makes me look sarcastic...oh wait, that's just me:

Buried Swiss Chard plant:

Colin:

Not Colin:

Colin again:

There are still piles of snow sitting around because it's been so cold. Sadly it wasn't snowy on Christmas though, it just poured down rain all day.

While coming in handy when I want to remember song lyrics, for the most part this is not good. I also knew immediately what Dad was talking about when he said someone on American Idol sang, "That song, by that guy" which was "Kiss From a Rose" by Seal, of course.

So someone can throw a partial song lyric at me and if I've heard it it's probably in there somewhere, but if I try to remember something important it's kind of hit-and-miss. I don't know how to fix this, though I would rather like to. :P

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Over Thanksgiving, my cousins and I were joking that we should make "Thanksgiving resolutions" instead of waiting till the new year, because everyone does that. The problem with that being that you have to come up with resolutions earlier, and before the stress of December, I'm simply not able to figure out what I should be doing...or something like that. So, my "Thanksgiving" resolutions are a bit late. One cousin also joked that one goal should be to get married by next Thanksgiving. The two under eighteen protested that they weren't old enough, and I agreed that that would be nice, but then it was hardly up to me, now was it? :D But then, resolutions do usually include some impossible goal, so why not? Oh yeah, cause it's a kind of scary goal and would worry people. Nevermind, we'll skip that one.

In all seriousness there are things I want to do next year, not so much "resolutions" though.

I'm considering taking some CLEP tests, so I'll need to study for those and take them. The school where I would take them only has them every first Saturday of the month, so I'd want to get to work studying for them fairly quickly so that I could take some in February. I still need to look at the list though, and see which ones would be good to take. And definitely study...make sure I remember how to do schoolwork. :P Some things (like Algebra or Science) I just don't do on a regular basis, but hopefully they will come back to me fairly easily.

I also want to enter things in the fair next fall. We skipped this year, which was a nice break, but I kind of miss the fun of it too. So, I'll try to work on projects throughout the year so I'm not trying to make a couple dozen things in a month.

Cross-stitch? Sometime it would be nice to finish the "Celtic Banner" piece I'm working on (or not working on, rather).

And I would like to find something useful to do with my extra time, when I'm not working. I'm wondering about selling things on Etsy. I need to do some research to see what that would mean tax-wise, because if it's going to make filing taxes a pain, then it's probably not worth it. And it's not like I really need the extra money anyway, I get enough from my main job, but I would have more to put in my savings accounts then, and it would keep me busy.

On the other hand, I would rather do something that was actually more useful to people. Making them consumers is all well and good for making money I guess, but if I was helping them by employing some useful skill and getting paid for it, I would feel better about it. :) Sure people who don't craft will buy stuff on Etsy for prices I wouldn't pay, but I'm not sure I could get past the feeling that I was somehow ripping them off. :D Hmm...I haven't thought of anything else though. Web-design is one of those things you can do from home, but my knowledge of html and css and all that stuff is very, very limited. Portrait photography would be cool...but near impossible to schedule in any good way for me. Not to mention I'm not a professional photographer by any means, because having a fancy camera does not a professional equal. Well...maybe it does anymore. :/

So, I have lots of things to do and think about next year. Of course, I'm coming up with all these things now, because I have lots to do before Christmas and that's how I function. Whether it's because I hyper-focus and when I have an hour to get the living room clean for company, I start obsessively cleaning drawers; or because I work better under pressure, and therefore having more to do makes me start adding to the list, I don't know...but it's all bothering me now, when I have other things to do and no time to think about this stuff. Ah well.

In the meantime, as far as a short-term to-do list goes, I need to:

1. Wrap some presents before Sunday2. Make fudge, finish a scarf, burn a CD, and wrap another present before Tuesday3. Wrap the rest of my Christmas presents sometime between Tuesday and Christmas

And I think that's all. I mean, there are other things too. Like going to a concert tonight, church on Sunday, a contra dance, and some other things probably. Oh, like work. Got that to do also.

What NOT to do next year? Lots of things, some tangible and others not. For starters, maybe not spend quite so much time on the computer? And not wait until two weeks before Christmas to start knitting something as a gift. Finding time to read again. I've always loved to read, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside this year, which is not good. Possibly related, I must have lost some reading skill, or my scanning tendencies increased, but I seem to have some slight dyslexia. Not seriously, and I'm not sure there's any way that one can have "slight dyslexic tendencies", but I keep reading things wrong. Nothing a little reading won't help though, I'm sure. :) But when one reads "project pages" as "posthumous", and other things like that...can't remember them off the top of my head, but I keep finding myself mixing things up...it can't be good.

Or maybe I'll just "Hit the snooze, roll over, then repeat. Make large purchases, then lose the receipts!"

Saturday, December 12, 2009

I see some funny things on the way to work. For instance, in the neighborhood I work in there's a guy who looks like the former governor of Illinois. That...well, I have nothing to add to that.

Last week on the way to work I saw a guy waiting in a big long line of cars to turn and he was shaving with an electric razor. And he looked SO bored. Maybe you should shave before you leave, and save the coffee to drink in the car or something? Or maybe he shaves and drinks his coffee on the way to work. Sounds like asking for an accident and major injury. Also, if you shave in the car so often that it bores you...maybe you need help.

At work, the mom told me the other day that the little girl could have salad with her lunch, but to make sure it was cut up in small pieces because she'd choke on a long stringy piece. Ha, no kidding! I can definitely do that. I am the queen of cutting salad into (rather disgustingly) small pieces. It took me years before I was able to eat a salad without cutting it into about 1/2 inch pieces. (I can now, just so you know. Don't have to cut my salad at all, though I still cut it a little bit occasionally depending on how big the pieces are.)

All used book stores should have a cat. I went to the two bookstores in town the other day, one had a cat (Roscoe) and the other did not. Gotta say the lack of a cat wasn't a deal-breaker, but it made the first place more interesting.

In my defense, I was Christmas shopping at the bookstores, but I bought ten books. Half of them are for me.

My dad would probably think this is a misuse of bullet points.

The stores and radio stations are playing Christmas music already. *sigh* Good news: I have yet to hear "Christmas Shoes". Bad news: it's only the 12th.

I own too many clothes. Shirts in particular.

I need jeans though. I go through them pretty fast because I wear them almost every day. I have discovered that Calvin Klein jeans fit me perfectly. However, my budget is not made for CK jeans. With any luck I can find some on eBay, since I didn't find any at Goodwill the other day. I think if I get the right size and the right leg cut they'll work.

Most jeans button the same way. When quickly trying on a pile of jeans at Goodwill last week I was completely thrown off by finding a pair that buttoned the opposite way. I believe I stood there for a good ten seconds wrapping my brain around how to button them. :P What, were they men's jeans? "Charter Club, 8 Petite". No, men's pants aren't sized that way. Weird.

I have all my Christmas shopping done! I am immensely pleased by this.

I want boots for winter. I don't know what I want. Strangely, I liked some "motorcycle" boots at Shoe Dept. They weren't that out there really...but they were Harley Davidson brand. My parents are rather worried. :)

In order to save money this winter we are keeping our heat lower than usual. Duke Power raised (or is going to raise) the electric prices by 7%. I am going to freeze to death this winter. Or drink lots of tea to stay warm.

I need to make green bean casserole sometime because we didn't have any with Thanksgiving dinner. I don't think I would have had room for it anyway, but I need some now. Love that stuff.

I adore Aldi. The baking supplies they sell are super, as is all of the chocolate, and so much other stuff as well. AND inexpensive.

My mom suggested I get more hobbies so she can find something to get me for Christmas. :D I haven't a clue what else I could take up doing though. Music of some sort I guess. Or sports. Yikes. All my current hobbies are either already taken care of or I'm picky about what I want (like yarn for projects). I don't really need anything for Christmas, and I want expensive stuff. Oh well. :)

I'm going to the candle tea at Old Salem this evening with some friends. As many times as I've been to Old Salem, I have never been to a candle tea. This should be interesting. I will do my best to not be impaled by a Moravian star.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

I just saw this on npr.org today and thought some of my friends might find it interesting. It's mostly about an auction of some of Hepburn's clothing but it has a little bit about her too.

A Hepburn Dress Of Your Very Own

"Are you in need of a new ensemble for your sojourn in Rome? Or perhaps some loungewear for serenading the moon on your fire escape? Today in London, Kerry Taylor Auctions will sell off an important collection of Audrey Hepburn clothing during its Passion for Fashion sale. The collection has been widely publicized and anticipated across the globe.

For a woman who saw herself as "too skinny, too flat and too tall," Hepburn played a major part in the way women looked and behaved in the 20th century. From ballet flats to skinny black jeans, Hepburn's wardrobe staples continue to influence another generation of fashion. In 2006, Gap went so far as to have Hepburn star in a commercial by using old film footage for its line of skinny black pants, similar to the ones she wore in the film Funny Face."...continue reading.

Monday, December 07, 2009

This is one of my favorite hymns, and we sang it at church yesterday, set to this tune.

O Father, You Are SovereignO Father, You are sovereignIn all the worlds You made;Your mighty Word was spoken,And light and life obeyed.Your voice commands the seasonsAnd bounds the ocean’s shore,Sets stars within their coursesAnd stills the tempests’ roar.

O Father, You are sovereignIn all affairs of man;No powers of death or darknessCan thwart Your perfect plan.All chance and change transcending,Supreme in time and space,You hold your trusting childrenSecure in Your embrace.

Friday, December 04, 2009

I think we're going to put up our Christmas tree tomorrow. I dragged it out of the attic last night, but didn't feel like putting it together, so it's just going to have to relax as we decorate it. (It'll need to be fluffed up a little, I mean.) The three pieces pretty much just slide together and the branches flip down, and then the little side branches have to be fluffed. At least, I think that's how it will work. We just got it last year, so we've only put it up once.

Dad and I stopped at Target after work yesterday to get some Christmas lights because he wants to hang icicle lights and some other different stuff outside this year. So apart from looking askance at the tacky Christmas decor for sale at Target, and feeling like Charlie Brown surrounded by the pink metal Christmas trees, I pretty much stood there and helped Dad figure out what lights we needed. And then here's why I wonder if I'm turning old and cranky at twenty. There was a group of three or four flighty college girls looking for lights to put up in their rooms and they were off course spazzing around all hyper, and squeaking "Ohhh, look at theeeese.....!" and such as is usual in such situations. (And that tends to annoy me anyway.) Then they got to yammering on and on and on about which kind of lights they should get, and oh those ones are solar-powered, and those ones twinkle. "Oh, I want the ones that turn on and off! Ohh, they're expensive..." *disappointed lip curl*

Let's just say it wasn't a good day to mess with me anyway, and I dislike shopping unless I can get it done quickly and without any interruption or annoyance. I meandered down to their end of the aisle, picked up and read the back of the box of inexpensive lights they were wanting to get first, spoke up and pointed out that those ones would flash too if the flashing bulb was installed. (Brief explanation of what the flashing bulb should look like...wondered if they knew how to change it anyway but didn't go into that.) They gaped at me of course, were perhaps slightly grateful to me for pointing that out, and at any rate cleared out of there pretty soon after that. So I may have helped, or I may have freaked them out, but I just had to do something. :P

Then on the way home I started wondering if I act like that when I'm somewhere with a group of girls, and I sure hope I'm not. I can't stand and don't want to be like that... :/ Hmm.

Anyway. Stop me if you see me acting like that. The flighty-ness I mean, not the snarkiness. There's no hope for that. ;)

Thursday, December 03, 2009

I'm glad to be home. We went to Ohio over the Thanksgiving weekend to visit my aunt and uncle and cousins. Oh and Grandma and Grandpa came too. We had a great time!

I must say I was pleasantly surprised by Ohio. I expected it be something like Pennsylvania or Illinois in the winter time, i.e. very gray and depressing, but it wasn't. It's not boring and flat for starters, and it was sunny, and there are very cool old buildings not just old steel plants and such. I mean, there was some of that too, but nothing like Pittsburgh was when we went there. Bleah. Pittsburgh. We somehow managed to stay in the gloomiest, most nasty part of the town when we were there for some work conference.

Anyway...

My cousins and I went for walks, and talked, and played games. Ate food. Lots of food. All of the Thanksgiving meal was absolutely delicious, especially the sweet potato casserole. I didn't realize how much I like sweet potato casserole with pecans and stuff on top.

That was my first serving, then I went back for more sweet potatoes (definitely have a weakness for them), another roll, and more cranberry stuff. Not the best idea perhaps, but then I never did get around to eating pie: so I guess that somehow balances it out? No, I didn't think so. And I'm sad I missed the pie. Rebecca made three kinds of pie and I didn't try any of them. What an awful cousin I am. Plus I'm kind of craving apple pie now...I might have to make some.

And goodness sakes. It takes a lot to overcome my insane metabolism, but two days of sitting in the car for eight hours, that meal, and some fast food did the trick. :/ I must say it surprised me when I got home and discovered my clothes weren't fitting quite as well, that just doesn't usually happen. Oh well, not a big problem, I'm thin enough as it is, and what with a couple days at work and a contra dance, I'm working it off. :)

Oh, we also tried some Cincinnati chili while we were there. I didn't get mine on spaghetti because I just wasn't sure I could handle that, but I got chili cheese fries. Yum. Really really good. It threw me off at first though, because the chili is kind of sweet, and it smelled like tacos in there. So I was thinking tacos, and sort of expecting it to taste like tacos (even though chili doesn't, of course, taste like that) so it was a bit of a surprise when it was sweet. Oh well. It was still very good!

Let's see, what all did we do? On...Friday, we all went to the art museum. Lots of cool stuff there. Including this car, isn't it splendid?

I took way too many pictures of everything on this trip, but I have a bunch just from the art museum. Art Museum Photo Album (That link should work. It's a Facebook album, but that's the link that should make it viewable even if you don't have an account. If it doesn't work, please let me know.)

Saturday Rebecca and I went with the rest of my family to the zoo, my other two cousins, Andrea and John went with Grandma and Grandpa to the creation museum that's just over the border in KY. I wasn't particularly looking forward to going to the zoo, but it ended up being fun and it sounded like we were better off at the zoo than the museum. Hanging out with the grandparents that long apparently started to get to Andrea, since when they got home she texted us asking "Where her homies were". ;)

So yeah. Zoo. Lots of animals. Lots of random people that Rebecca and I were either fed up with bumping into, or talked about, etc. (Gosh, that sounds rude...) And then lunch... Lunch was very exciting. We ate at the one cafe in the zoo that was open, and sat outside, ready to enjoy our lunch and look at the peacocks strolling about the zoo. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Sure.

So, I'm getting ready to eat my french fries and see these little birds hanging around waiting for food, so I break off some bits of french fries and throw them to the birds. The birds eat them, fine, cute, I go on eating. That is, until Rebecca points out that the peacocks are gathering. Oh, that's cool, of course, they want food too, but they're not going to get close enough to be a problem, and I'm not going to throw them anything because there's certainly not enough for all of them. (See where this is going?) So one of the peacocks comes right up to the edge of the table; his head's about at a level with the table, he's peering up to see what food we have. At this point, I'm starting to eye the peacock a little more closely, not sure what his intentions are. Next thing I know, totally unexpected by me, he flap-flumphes onto the edge of the table (yes, I kinda forgot they fly) at which point I believe I involuntarily shrieked. Rebecca and I immediately shoo the bird, getting him to get off the table, which he does, by sort of falling backwards while flapping great gusts of breeze which blow the plates and napkins off the table.At this point I am no longer impressed with peacocks, no longer think it's cool that they'll walk right up to humans, no longer am even considering sharing my food with them, and instead hold my water bottle in my free hand while eating the rest of my food so as to be able to hit any of them that try that stunt again. They didn't. One walked back and forth and Rebecca and I shoved the empty chair back and forth in front of it and it looked for a spot to get closer. Finally, some naive people a couple tables down sat down and start exclaiming about the peacocks and throwing food to them.

And then the squirrel decided to try his luck. Given his much smaller build and lack of flying ability he was nowhere near as intimidating as the peacocks. He did get on the table, where (in between taking pictures) I stared him down and told him firmly that no matter how cute and furry he was, he was getting a water bottle to the head if he didn't watch it. He finally gave up and went and jumped in the trash can. Oh no! Poor rejected squirrel. I never intentionally hurt anyone...but I must have hurt his feelings. :(

I took pictures at the zoo also, of course. Oh, right, they're in that other album too, along with the art museum pictures. I didn't get any pictures of the peacocks with their tails spread out, but I believe that's a mating ritual and it didn't seem to be the season for that. Or maybe these peacocks are just too fat and lazy from eating people's junk food to bother with that. :D

Oh, what else? We watched some movies. "Sabrina" w/Audrey Hepburn in it, and "It Happened One Night". We watched that one online. Started out on YouTube, and got so fed up with the sound/picture lag that I searched and found it on GoogleVideo instead. It's cool how many old movies are online, especially since it can be hard to find them to rent anywhere.

Took lots of miscellaneous pictures of all of us too. :) Cousins (and other relatives). I have a couple random videos too, but I'll put them in another post tomorrow.

The trip wasn't too bad. About eight hours of driving from here to Ohio. I drove about 60% of that on the way back because Mom was too tired to drive any. But that was fun, I enjoy driving. On the way there we made the mistake again of stopping in Nitro, WV. Terrible, terrible town. At least the part right off the highway certainly is. If there's a nicer part, we haven't seen it. According to Wikipedia there were munitions plants and such there during WWI, but they aren't active anymore. Hmm. It kinda looked like there was a nuclear power plant there now, but...ok...(Incidentally, Wiki says that Clark Gable, who starred in "It Happened One Night", lived in Nitro briefly.)It also says the pollution used to be really bad because of all the manufacturing, and Nitro was the location of a sighting of the "Mothman"...these two things may be connected, no? *eye roll*Anyway, icky little town, nasty fast food places, not stopping there again.

I took pictures out the window of the car (a technique which sometimes worked and sometimes, sadly, did not) and also at various other points during the weekend: Cincinnati Trip

I stayed with my cousins all but the last day and one morning after making my fried eggs for breakfast, I was putting the eggs back in the fridge and started rearranging them like I usually do. Needless to say, my uncle gave me a strange look as if to say "What the heck are you doing with the egg carton??!" I explained that I always rearrange the eggs so that they are evenly distributed throughout the carton and when you pick it up it isn't unbalanced, leading to incidents that would be harmful to eggs. (And yes, I probably should have refrained from rearranging eggs at someone else's house.)

The last night and morning, I went and stayed at the hotel with Mom and Dad and Colin. Made Colin sleep on the floor, while I got the fold-out couch, since I was going to have to drive the next day. ;) I don't think he minded, he thought it was pretty neat, especially when I set up the couch cushions as a sort of mattress.

On a side note, I guess they don't have annoying little bells at the front desks of hotels anymore? Not sure that I would ring them, even if they did, but I went down to get some towels and ended up sort of tapping my knuckles on the granite countertop to get the attention of the desk clerk who had his back to me and was texting or something. I guess I should have said something to get his attention, but couldn't think of anything. "Excuse me" would have worked, but it didn't occur to me. :P To his credit he was really nice and gave me extra towels. :)

Hi, I'm a homeschooler and I haven't stayed in that many hotels recently... Speaking of which, we saw some homeschoolers on the way home. (They had an nche.com bumper sticker.)

And finally, a group photo, which we took Saturday night right before the grandparents took off without saying goodbye to my cousins. :P All in all we had minimal grandparent drama for once. Just a few things, but for the most part tempers were kept. Unless I missed something...